Wars, persecution drive record 68.5 million from their homes: UN

Wars, persecution and other violence have driven a record 68.5 million people from their homes, more than the population of Britain or France, the UN refugee agency said on Tuesday.

>>Thomson FoundationReuters
Published : 19 June 2018, 02:34 PM
Updated : 19 June 2018, 04:17 PM

Here are some facts from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees' annual global trends study, published on the eve of World Refugee Day.

- One person was uprooted every two seconds on average in 2017.

- Worldwide, one in every 110 people is displaced.

- The global number of refugees grew by 2.9 million in 2017 to 25.4 million - the biggest increase the UNHCR has seen in a single year.

- People uprooted inside their own country accounted for 40 million of the total, marginally down on 2016.

- Syrians are the largest displaced population with 12.6 million people forced from their homes.

- Worldwide, an estimated 16.2 million people were newly displaced last year.

- Major drivers were the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the war in South Sudan and the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya from Myanmar.

- Some 3.1 million asylum-seekers were awaiting decisions on applications for refugee status by the end of 2017, up by 300,000.

- Just over a fifth of the world's refugees are Palestinian.

- Two-thirds of the rest come from five countries: Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar and Somalia.

- Some 85 percent of refugees are hosted by developing countries, many of which are desperately poor.

- Four in five refugees remain in countries neighbouring their own.

- Turkey hosts the highest number of refugees, with 3.5 million people, mainly Syrians, followed by Pakistan and Uganda, both hosting 1.4 million.

- Lebanon hosts the largest number of refugees relative to its national population, with one in four people a refugee.

- Most refugees worldwide live in urban areas rather than in camps or rural regions.

- More than half of displaced people are children, including many who are unaccompanied or separated from their families.

- Some 102,800 refugees were resettled in 2017, a 46 percent fall from 2016. The drop was due to a reduction in the number of resettlement places on offer.